The Quilt Inn Country Cookbook

Aliske Webb

The Storytellers

Inevitably everyone who comes toThe Quilt Inn comments on the name and talk

will turn to quilting. I can’t think of any other name that would have evoked such feeling

and storytelling as quilting has. Even for those who have never picked up a needle.

Everyone, it seems, has a quilting story to tell. Many are eagerly and proudly told.

Some are reluctant and sadly shared. All are precious memories.

A neatly dressed middle-aged woman recalled quilting with her grandmother

at a local church bee. Grandma was such a perfectionist that after her friends went

home, she would pull out any less-than-perfect stitches and redo them. She never told

her friends she did so. She loved them too much. And she quilted for the

companionship. The woman learned lessons of love from her Grandma.

A young woman with long unruly hair remembered her spinster aunt teaching her

to quilt as a young girl. The little girl accidentally left a knot on the top of the quilt and

wanted to take it out so not to ruin the aunt’s quilt. No, the aunt said, leave it in. That

way when I run my fingers over the top and feel the knot, it will remind me of you. The

young woman learned about loving acceptance and the poignancy of memory from her

aunt.

An older woman recalled that her mother worked in a cotton mill during the

Depression. Each night she was given a half yard of new cloth to clean down the

machines. Instead of using the new piece, she kept it and took it home. She used

another old cloth and washed it over and over again, secretly taking it back in to work

with her every day. From all the new pieces of cloth she made clothes for the family,

and wonderful scrap quilts for the less fortunate—at least she had a job to feed her

family. The woman learned about resourcefulness from her mother, and has committed

her life to helping others.

A teacher of remedial reading classes for children took a quilting class at a

local quilt shop. She had never done anything like this before. All the other women in

class seemed better and faster at learning than she was. “This is how my students feel

in normal classrooms,” she realized. The teacher learned heartfelt compassion and

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Country Cooking